Homeless Adults’ Recovery Experiences in Housing First and Traditional Services Programs in Seven European Countries

Across Europe, as governments turn to housing-led strategies in attempts to reverse rising rates of homelessness, increasing numbers of Housing First (HF) programs are being implemented. As HF programs become more widespread, it is important to understand how service users experience them compared to the more prevalent traditional treatment-first approach to addressing long-term homelessness. Although there is a large body of research on service users’ experiences of Housing First compared to treatment-first in North American contexts, comparatively less is known about how these two categories of homeless services are experienced in the European context. In a correlational and cross-sectional study, part of a larger examination of homelessness in Europe, participants (n = 520) engaged with either HF (n = 245) or traditional services (TS; n = 275) programs in seven countries completed measures of their experiences of services (consumer choice, housing quality, and service satisfaction) and recovery (time in independent housing, psychiatric symptoms, and community integration). Across the seven countries, participants engaged with HF programs reported experiencing more consumer choice, better perceived housing quality, and more satisfaction with services than participants engaged in TS programs. Participants in HF programs also reported a greater proportion of time in independent accommodation, fewer psychiatric symptoms, and more community integration. Varying patterns of association between experiences of services and recovery outcomes were observed. Findings indicate HF consistently predicts greater recovery than TS across diverse sociopolitical and economic contexts. Implications of findings for configurations of homeless services and homeless services policy are discussed.     

Are Children's Concerns About Punishment Related to Their Aggression?

Although moral reasoning is recognized as an influence on students' behavior, it is often overlooked in policies and interventions developed to change their behavior. Relations between specific types of moral reasoning (i.e., imminent, probable, physical, and psychological) and teacher-reported overt aggression were examined in 203 first and second graders. Regression analyses indicated that psychological reasoning explained a significant amount of the variance in overt aggression. Follow-up analyses indicated that overtly aggressive boys demonstrated more concern for the imminent consequences of their behavior on themselves (e.g., punishment) and less concern for the psychological consequences of their actions on others (e.g., hurting others' feelings) than nonaggressive boys. Implications for the prevention and treatment of aggressive behavior are discussed.     

No Identity Without an Entity

Peter Geach's puzzle of intentional identity is to explain how the claim ‘Hob thinks a witch has blighted Bob's mare, and Nob wonders whether she (the same witch) killed Cob's sow’ is compatible with there being no such witch. I clarify the puzzle and reduce it to the familiar problem of negative existentials. That problem is a paradox of representations that seem to include denials of commitment (implicitly, here), to carry commitment to what they deny commitment to, and to be true. The best proposed solutions can be understood through this paradox; I evaluate them, and defend a new solution.     

National identity and international giving: Irish adults' accounts of charitable behaviour

Research on helping behaviour has emphasized the importance of the group and particularly the nation in establishing the norms and boundaries of emergency helping. Less attention has been paid to the role of the national group in longer‐term routine helping such as charitable giving. This is particularly important given recent research on intergroup helping which points to the impact of power relations on willingness of national groups to give and receive aid. The present research examines people's accounts of charitable giving in their day‐to‐day lives in Ireland, a country which has recently undergone a transformation in economic development and international relations. Discursive analysis of five focus groups with 14 Irish university students illustrates how participants proactively invoke national identity to account for giving or withholding charity. Our findings demonstrate how Irish national identity can be strategically and flexibly used to manage participants' local moral identity in the light of Ireland's changing international relations and in particular how participants display concerns to be seen to intend ‘autonomous’ rather than ‘dependency’‐oriented helping. The findings suggest that both national identity and international relations provide resources for individuals negotiating the complex demands and concerns surrounding charitable giving. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Wellbeing in Australia

The Indigenous people of Australia are severely disadvantaged according to a range of objective indicators. Unfortunately, the use of subjective indicators has been largely absent from the Indigenous policy domain. This is problematic because many things that matter to Indigenous peoples cannot be measured objectively. This paper addresses this gap; specifically, we employ a range of econometric techniques and Australian household data to explore the subjective wellbeing of Indigenous Australians in relation to: (1) levels of life satisfaction; (2) inequality in life satisfaction; (3) the prevalence and severity of dissatisfaction; and (4) determinants of life satisfaction. Results indicate that Indigenous life satisfaction peaked in 2003 and has since declined, and inequality in life satisfaction is greater for Indigenous than non-Indigenous Australians. Further, while the determinants of life satisfaction for non-Indigenous Australians are consistent with existing evidence and a priori expectations, the results for Indigenous Australians differ in many respects.     

Theologies of pastoral leadership

The disestablishment of mainline Protestantism as the default religiosity and public theological voice, lamented by many of its members, presents new opportunities for conceiving of pastoral leadership in faithful ways. The pastor as public leader is better imagined as a visionary possibilizer and convener of public conversations, exerting influence in indirectly persuasive ways, rather than as spokesperson for an institution.     

Supine defense in the intraspecific fighting of male house mice mus domesticus

House mice have been reported rarely to perform the supine behavior pattern as a defensive tactic during intraspecific fighting. However, in this study of intraspecific fighting by male mice, it is shown that mice do indeed rotate to supine. This maneuver is used to evade or extricate themselves from bites to the lower dorsum by the attacking opponent. Once free from the bite the defender does not remain supine, but will immediately turn to prone and flee. Remaining motionless in the supine position may serve a submissive function in other species, but this does not seem to be the case for mice. The present findings illustrate that the supine tactic is a dynamic maneuver for defense of body areas targeted by the opponent. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.